Defending Christmas

            

Last year, just about this time, I posted a “Heartwarming Xmas Tale.”  I fully expected the piece to become a Yule classic and it was my sincere wish that families would gather every Christmas Eve and read the Tale aloud.  I envisioned the children each reading their favorite part and the glow of the story’s message of kindness would carry everyone through the season.

Unfortunately, the reaction to my offering was less than enthusiastic.  Pat and I hosted a small dinner party late last December and in keeping with the season I printed a few copies of the “Heartwarming Xmas Tale” and left them on an end table for our guests to pick up and read.  The first friend to do so, read the whole piece and then screwed up his face and asked, rather incredulously, “Did you make that up”?  Little did I know, his reaction would be the most positive one I would get.

Another friend began reading the post and periodically would look at me and shake his head.  My five and half regular readers, who often send me emails commenting on various posts, were ominously silent.

These reactions were a bit sobering, but I felt I could always rely on my family for support.  At least that was how I felt until Pat asked my mother if she had read the Tale and my sister reminded her that Pat was referring to “that stupid thing I had written.”  Even the Teacher’s reaction was tinged with embarrassment and shame.

All of this lead me to decide to sit this Xmas season out and not to write anything that would cause further distress to friends and family.  But that was before I heard Sarah Palin and Bill O’Reilly warning of a war on Christmas.  Apparently, this war has been going on for at least twelve years according to Bill.  I don’t know how I missed it, but the reaction to “The Heartwarming Xmas Tale” started to make sense.

Then my awareness of the war on Christmas was heightened when I heard a Fox News host express her distress at having to drive her kids around looking for a nativity scene.  I had no idea things had gotten so bad and I wondered what I, personally, could do to defend Christmas.  I figured that if our Fox News host was out driving around there had to be countless other parents in the same situation.  So I went on churchangel.com and found that there are 420 Christian churches in Minneapolis registered on the website.  I’m pretty sure there are at least a few more that haven’t registered with churchangel.com and I’m sure there are more Christian churches in Saint Paul and the rest of the metro area.  So, before you get in the car to search for a Christian Christmas display, I suggest you try this method to foil the anti-Christmas gang.  Go out side and spin in a circle.  At some point before you become too dizzy, stop spinning and run in the direction you are facing.  Given the number of Christian churches in our community, you should only have to run approximately three blocks in any direction to run into a Christian church.  Once you get to the church, it is highly likely it will have a nativity scene on display, or at the very least, will be able to tell you where you need to go to see one.

I’ve spent a day cleaning out the space under the stairs to our basement, so when the Teacher and Pako come to celebrate Christmas with us this weekend before they head to Mexico to celebrate the actual day with Pako’s family, we can eat down there without being disturbed.  It might be a bit cramped, but it is more easily defended and I swear, the forces of Satan will not get my Christmas ham this year.

As I thought more about the reaction to my Heartwarming Xmas Tale last year and put it into the context of the War on Christmas, I realized that the cabal that is trying to ruin Christmas had probably manipulated my readers’ subconscious.  Of course, some of my readers are just plain heathens and there is no explanation for them.  The more I though about it, the more convinced I became, that I too, was a victim of the War on Christmas.

My newly raised consciousness required I go all out to defend Christmas.  As I pondered what I could do to fight back, it came to me like a lightening bolt (I intend to write to Bill and ask if he thinks it was Divine inspiration).  So, in order to stick it to the hordes of anti-Christmasites out there, I have decided to defend Christmas by re-posting “A Heartwarming Xmas Tale.”  Enjoy it with your family and Happy Holidays.

Once upon a time there was a man who lived in a small town who made his living repairing shoes.  The town was not wealthy and people still had their shoes repaired rather than buying new ones and the man was able to make a modest living from his business.

The man rented a small cubby hole, not much larger than a walk in closet, in the town’s downtown, and there he sat all day surrounded by pairs of broken down shoes.

The man was not particularly good looking or bright but was a good soul whose one unfulfilled wish was to meet a woman, marry and have a large family.  The man truly loved children and wanted to surround himself with happy kids.  His problem in fulfilling his dream was his innate shyness and social ineptitude made it difficult for him to meet and woo a mate.

At around this time there was a woman who made her living walking all over town, with a small grinding wheel, sharpening knives, scissors and just about anything that needed sharpening.  As she walked through the various sections of the town she would whistle a sweet tune that would signal the housewives and business owners that she was in their vicinity in case they needed something sharpened.

The first time the shoe repairman saw the woman he was immediately smitten.  Every time he heard her whistle, he would frantically search for something for her to sharpen.  There interactions were very polite and formal and appeared on the surface to be nothing more than business transactions.

One day, when the man had everything he owned with an edge already sharpened, he, out of desperation, presented the woman with a spoon.  The woman smiled and realized the man admired her for more than her sharpening prowess. Gently, she led their conversation around to Saturday night and the man managed to mumble an invitation to the woman to go with him to a movie.  Thus began their yearlong courtship that ended with a small ceremony before the town Justice of the Peace.

The woman was soon pregnant, as the man, while not being overly bright or good looking, was blessed with highly potent swimmers.  Nine months later, a baby boy was born.  They named the baby Juan.  The man and woman lived in a small one-bedroom apartment over a hardware store and Juan slept in a dresser drawer.   As soon as it was humanly possible the woman became pregnant again and nine months later another child was born.  Neither the man nor the woman could agree on a name for the new baby so eventually they decided to name the child Two.

The man and woman were running out of available dresser drawers so alternative housing became a necessity.  Around this time the man’s only living relative, a bachelor farmer, named Eddie died and left the man a large, if somewhat rundown, farmhouse about three miles outside of town.  Uncle Eddie had lived in the farmhouse the last 25 years with his best friend Larry, who rented one of the many bedrooms in the old house.  Larry had died three months before Uncle Eddie and their misfortune solved the man and woman’s housing problem.  They moved to the farmhouse and before long the woman was pregnant again.   When the baby was born the same naming inertia happened and they decided to name the baby Three.

Life proceeded in kind, and over the next ten to fifteen years Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven and Twelve were born.  They were a poor family but generally happy as the man and the woman were kind and loving parents.  As time went on the man and woman noticed that their twelve offspring were taking different life paths.  Two, Four, Six, Eight, Ten, and Twelve were studious highly focused achievers while Juan, Three, Five, Seven, Nine, and Eleven lacked direction and, frankly, were a little odd.

Time rolled on and one by one the children left home to pursue their fortunes.  Two, Four, Six, Eight, Ten and Twelve embarked on successful careers as doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers and college professors.  They married like-minded professionals and moved to all four corners of the country.

The other children, I will call them “the odd children” not in judgment but in order to facilitate the story, had tougher, if not more colorful, paths to adulthood.

Juan had several scrapes with the law over petty thievery and had spent a few months in the county lockup on various theft misdemeanors.  His passion was taxidermy.  He specialized in recreating famous scenes from history by posing various vermin and critters he found in the woods behind his house or along the side of the road.  His best-known piece was a recreation of Lee’s surrender to Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse marking the end of the civil war. He considered a recreation of Bart Starr’s quarterback sneak at the end of the Ice Bowl to be his masterpiece.  He agonized over how to recreate Chuck Mercein, a Packer running back, who had tumbled into the end zone behind Starr, with his arms raised giving the signal for a touchdown because the critters he had used to represent the 22 players on the field all had short forelegs and were incapable of raising them over their heads convincingly.  Juan lost sleep trying to figure out how to solve this problem and complete the piece he felt would rocket him to preeminence in the world of taxidermy.

Three was an extremely shy and socially inept child who only really felt comfortable in the presence of chickens.  Every birthday and holiday he asked for chickens and before long he was selling eggs out of the shoe repair shop.  When he turned eighteen he left home and used his egg money to buy a small piece of land in the country away from humans and started a poultry farm.

Five’s only distinguishing characteristic was his uncanny resemblance to Popeye the Sailor Man.  He briefly cashed in on his appearance when a local movie theatre ran a Robert Altman film retrospective that included his Popeye movie.  Five would stand in the lobby dressed as the famous sailor and spin a corncob pipe in the corner of his mouth.  This employment was short lived and he worked several menial jobs before settling in as a short order cook in a 24-hour greasy spoon.

Seven had problems with drugs and alcohol during her late teens and twenties.  She rocketed from one shaky relationship to another, always ending badly.  At one point in her late twenties she married Homer Swans, who she believed was the heir to the Swan’s ice cream fortune. When she sobered up, after a week or two, she discovered Homer was the heir to a dilapidated house trailer and nothing else.  The marriage lasted 39 days ending in a no fault divorce.  Seven’s marriage experience represented rock bottom for her and she resolved to change her life.  She took up endurance sports beginning with mountain bike racing and expanding to marathon running, triathlons, speed walking, mountain climbing, bungee jumping, steeplechase, and giant wave surfing.  Her latest sport was long distance swimming and she hoped to swim from Florida to Cuba by the end of the year.

Nine was a joiner.  Unfortunately, she most often joined cults.  Her extreme devotion to principle and rigid adherence to every rule soon alienated everyone in the cult and she would soon be asked to leave.  Her latest obsession was linked to a rogue priest in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who advocated dancing as the cure all for the world’s problems.  Utilizing Nine as his chief disciple, the priest instituted the Mash Potato Mass during which the flock would get up and dance for an hour straight.  Any dance was acceptable and it was not uncommon to see the mash potato, boogalou, fox trot, polka, and all manner of free style twitching going on at the same time.  The local bishop was threatening to have the priest defrocked if he didn’t stop his dance ministry but Nine assured him that if he was defrocked she would continue ministering to the religiously funky.

Eleven became the world’s worst daredevil.  He never failed to clear five of the six cars he was attempting to jump on his motorcycle. He always managed to blow himself up or set himself on fire when he performed standard daredevil stunts.  He worked a regional circuit of stock car races, small county fairs and church picnics and became a local legend.  He never failed to entertain and had broken nearly every bone in his body at one time or another.  He also held the record for walking away from small aircraft crashes and had attracted a small following at the local airport where he hung out.  His latest endeavor was to form a Piper Cub (a small prop airplane) precision flying team.  They perfected one trick, which consisted of two columns of five planes in parallel lines nose to tail.  Eleven lead the other fliers in this formation, which he called “the pipe.”   They were in great demand satisfying America’s curious desire to see planes fly over sporting events and had flown over high school football games in three different states.

Time passed and the shoe repairman passed away peacefully at home.  The woman continued to live in the old farmhouse, now alone, and grew to be old and fat.  The even keeled children slowly stopped visiting home citing busy schedules, deadlines, travel distance and various other career pressures for their absences.  Unspoken, but none-the-less real, were their feelings of embarrassment at their humble beginnings, the run down farmhouse and their overweight mother.  So it was left to the odd children to make sure that their mother was not alone on holidays and birthdays.

So it was on a December 25^th morning, Juan was busy strapping a fruit tree he had dug out of his neighbor’s yard the night before to the roof of his van.  Just as he was tightening the last strap, Juan looked up and saw Three coming up the street.  Three was carrying a small cage containing two Crevecoeur chickens.  Under his other arm he carried a large Tupperware tub.  Three had contacted Juan a couple of nights before to see if he could get a ride to their mother’s house.

Although they hadn’t seen each other in over two years, Juan and Three greeted each other as if they had been hanging around together the night before.  Juan knew that Three wasn’t much of a conversationalist and the four hour drive would be done mostly in silence.

Juan took the cage from Three and put Three’s French chickens in the back of his van.  Juan asked Three what was in the Tupperware tub.  Three told him he had been contacted by Five who told him he had to work at the diner on the 25^th and wouldn’t be able to go with his brothers to visit their mother.  Five, knowing his mother’s love of onion rings, had made up a batch to send to her as a present.  Three popped off the Tupperware lid and showed Juan Five’s golden rings.

Juan and Three got in the van and were backing out of the driveway when Juan suddenly hit the breaks, put the van in park and ran back in the house.  A minute later Juan came back out carrying a stuffed bird.  He told Three he was going to attach the bird to the branches of the tree when he transplanted it in his mother’s side yard.  He thought she would get a kick out of seeing the bird in the fruit tree.

They rode in silence until they cleared the outskirts of the town.  Once out in the country, Three turned to Juan and asked him if Seven was going to be there this year.  Juan told him she wouldn’t be there because Seven Swans a’swimming to Cuba as they spoke. Three then told Juan that Nine’s laity was dancing and she couldn’t get away this year, either.  Juan told Three he had heard from Eleven and was told he would meet them at the farmhouse and he was planning something special for their mother.  Thus the conversation ended until they were about a quarter mile from the farmhouse.

As they approached their mother’s house, Juan heard a faint droning sound and spotted a series of small specs in the sky.  He pulled the van over and he and Three got out and looked up in time to see Eleven’s pipers piping over their mother’s house.

Three and Juan stood transfixed, as they were not immune to America’s strange love of flyovers, until the pipers had disappeared from view.  Juan then looked at the farmhouse itself and saw what looked like flames shooting out the upstairs windows and smoke billowing from a section of the roof. The boys jumped back in the van and raced the last quarter mile skidding to a stop some 25 feet from the front door.  Juan and Three burst from the van and charged up the front steps and into the house.  The first floor was beginning to fill with smoke and Three went from room to room calling his mother’s name.  Juan dashed upstairs and ran down a very smoky hallway where he found his dazed and disoriented mother sitting in a heap.  Juan called to Three and the two of them struggled to get their rather large mother to her feet.  Once she was standing each of the boys took one of her arms and guided her down the hallway, down the stairs, through the living room and out into the front yard where the three of them gulped in the most delicious air they had ever breathed.

The moral of the story:  Appreciate your odd children because they may someday pull your fat out of the fire.

HO HO HO!    Merry Xmas, Everyone.

Ambiguity

            

Recently, we celebrated Veteran’s Day.  Let me begin by saying, everyone who honorably served in the military deserves a day and probably a whole lot more.  But, Veteran’s Day reminds me of a bit comedian, Louis CK, does in his stand up entitled “Of Course, but Maybe.”  The bit is built around certain facts that every right thinking person should embrace, but there are these darker thoughts that creep into one’s mind that may be wrong, but have a certain rationale to them.

I think part of the uncertainty I feel about Veteran’s Day is that it is just too easy.  The NFL hands out camouflage towels and underwear, finds a local member of the military to sing the national anthem and everyone feels good.  People slap yellow ribbon magnets on their cars and thank soldiers in the airport for their service and then go on with their day.  These are nice gestures, but are they enough?

Since the inception of our all-volunteer military, we have placed tremendous burdens on a tiny sliver of our population.  We have been at war for over ten years now, yet our citizens have not been asked for any contribution beyond standing at attention when the jets fly over the stadium.  The press has treated these prolonged wars as not being worthy of coverage and we end up treating war like it’s a bad reality show that has run its course and now bores us.  There is no pressure applied by the press or public to end the war because it doesn’t affect the vast majority of us.

I wonder how the veteran, who is number 750 thousand on the waiting list to have his or her disability claim processed, feels when they are being thanked for their service in an ad sponsored by Walmart.  Did the many hundreds of service members who have committed suicide in recent years feel they were appreciated?  Does the show of public support ring hollow for the soldiers in Afghanistan, whose rations were cut to two meals a day this year or the soldiers who were sent to Iraq without the armored vehicles they needed to protect themselves from the enemy’s most prolific and deadly weaponry?

It all just feels like a PR campaign sometimes.  In my lifetime, the country has engaged in three major wars and numerous military operations that haven’t risen to full-scale war.  The older I get, the more convinced I get that when the first bullet is fired both participants have already lost.  Vietnam was fought, supposedly, to keep the dominoes from falling in South East Asia.  We lost that war, yet the dominoes did not fall as predicted.  Was all the blood and horror and killing worth it?  Was all the money that could have been used for research, education, food programs, and infrastructure, better spent killing tens of thousands of American soldiers and at least a million Vietnamese?

After 9/11, a shocked and frightened nation was rushed into a war in Iraq despite the Iraqis having nothing to do with the attack.  The plan for this war was drawn up years before the Bush administration brought the neocons into power and the trauma of 9/11 was used as a triggering event to justify their dreams of restructuring the Middle East more to their liking while securing hegemony over the region and its resources.  A compliant press beat the drums of war and administration officials gave the public visions of mushroom clouds and poison gas labs to build support for their war of choice.   The voices of caution or protest were labeled naïve or un-American.  And, over three thousand of our soldiers died and tens of thousands were wounded as a result. 

What did the Iraq war achieve?   An evil dictator, who was our evil dictator a little over a decade before, was removed.  We spent somewhere in the neighborhood of two to six trillion dollars, lost thousands of our soldiers, brought about the death of at least 100 thousand Iraqi civilians and displaced as many as two million and strengthened Iran’s influence in the country.  Today, Iraq is a country torn apart by the instability brought about by our war.  This year, more than 8000 Iraqi civilians have died in terror bombings and targeted killings.  If this war was a success, I would hate to see a disaster.

In Afghanistan we are wrapping up twelve years of war and we have no idea what victory looks like.  Our Afghan allies have killed as many of our soldiers as our Afghan enemies in the last couple years. In 2012, more U.S. military personnel killed themselves than were killed by the enemy.  Again, we have spent enormous amounts of money and spilled more of our soldiers' blood without seeing much of a return.  Now the Obama administration is in negotiations with the Afghan government to reach an open ended agreement to keep our troops there for at least the next ten years.

By all accounts, our soldiers have performed well, but that is a different question than whether the sacrifices we have asked of them were worth it. Can we honestly say that the U.S. is better off today because of these wars?  Therein lies another conflict that pops up for me when we celebrate Veteran’s Day.  I know it is a day to honor our veterans, but it seems to me that in honoring our men and women in uniform, we too often conflate their service with the policies put forth by the civilian leadership of our military.  I fear that supporting our troops gets perverted into supporting disastrous military actions that are paid for with the blood, bodies, and minds of our troops.

In the last couple of years, tapes of Lyndon Johnson talking about the Vietnam War at the beginning of his administration revealed that he knew before he escalated the war that the cause was lost.  He escalated it anyway fearing he would expose himself and his party to political attacks along the lines of the “who lost China” debate after Mao’s revolution.  Tens of thousands of American soldiers died because of domestic politics, not to mention somewhere in the neighborhood of a million Vietnamese.  In 1968 Richard Nixon was elected partly on the promise that he had a secret plan to end the war.   At the end of his first four-year term the war raged on. Our veterans paid the price.  No amount of medal ceremonies, Veteran’s Days, or proclamations of support can make that right.

When I hear some pundit piously intoning how the troops are protecting our freedom, I can’t help but think about Vietnam and Iraq and wonder how our freedom was protected by these policy disasters.  The deaths, displacements, suicides, PTSD victims, the draining of our resources, the corrupting influence of war (torture, etc.), and damage to our prestige around the world seem the more likely result of these wars than any defense of freedom.

I think if we really want to support our troops, we need to step back and ask ourselves some very hard questions.  Why are our troops stationed in 132 countries around the world and who’s interests are they serving?  Why do we have over 700 U.S. military installations, not counting “black sites” around the world and, again, who’s interests are they serving?  What exactly are we getting for our $700 billion a year in defense spending (not counting the billions being spent by the various Intelligence organizations whose budgets are top secret) and who is profiting from our spending more than all other developed countries combined on defense? One has to wonder how that 700 billion a year is being spent when our soldiers or their families were out buying their own body armor and back home their families needed food stamps to keep from going hungry.

 

These are the big questions that are never even discussed.  The topic is taboo and so we go on and on.  If we really want to support our troops, we should make sure when they are committed to war, the vital interests of the country are at stake and not just the interests of the energy extraction industry.  When we spend such stupendous amounts every year we make it more likely we will engage in continuous war.  Not only do we create a very powerful war lobby, but also it is unreasonable to believe a society that spends like we do on defense will not eventually feel tremendous pressure to use the machinery it has spent such a large portion of the national treasure creating.  I am not even necessarily arguing for drastic cuts in the military budget.  What I am arguing for is an honest debate.  The people of the U.S. really need to more fully understand what is being done in their name and weigh in on whether or not they think we are pursuing the right, or even a sustainable, course of action.   That would do more to support our troops than all the flag-waving ever could.

And one last thing makes me queasy.  There seems to be this idea out there that everyone in uniform is a hero.  From all reports of people on the left, right and center, the people in our military are exceptionally dedicated to their mission and represent some of our best and brightest citizens.  They are not all heroes.  Doing your job well, even exceptionally well, does not make you a hero.  To say so is to cheapen the concept and if everyone is a hero than no one is.  I have a good friend who was a clerk typist on a U.S. ship during the Vietnam War.  We joke about him being the hero of the Subic Bay bars.  He scoffs at the idea that everyone is a hero.

Why does it matter?  Because when things go seriously wrong, (for example, the record of rape committed by military personnel upon other military personnel and the complicity of the command structure), it makes it harder for voices to be raised and for people to criticize military behavior when it needs to be criticized.   No organization on earth is made up of all heroes.  The concept of an all hero military makes it easier to indiscriminately throw money and resources into the defense pot and deflect inquiry whether or not it is in the best interest of the country.  Demagogues are well stocked with pithy sound bites to use against anyone who questions policy when it involves an organization made up entirely of heroes.

 

In 2012 we had a presidential election.  Not once during the numerous Republican debates or the three debates between the President and Mitt Romney were the 132 countries, 700 plus military installations, or the $700 billion dollar defense budget seriously addressed.  It wasn’t discussed or debated in the 2008, 2004, 2000 elections or any other election in my memory either.  We need to ask ourselves about the state of our democracy when fundamental issues like how and when we use our military and what we will spend on it aren’t even issues for public discourse.

Supporting the troops should go beyond lip service and we as a nation need to examine the role our military plays in the world and when and where we will ask our men and women of the military to spill their blood and endure the horrors of war.  I don’t pretend to know the answers but I sure as hell would like to hear the discussion.

Dublin

                       

Recently, Pat and I hung out in Dublin for 10 days or so.  I never thought I would go to Ireland, but a friend of ours is working there for two and a half years and the opportunity presented itself, so off we went.  Our friend has been going to Ireland for decades, speaks fluent Irish, and is as close to a native guide as an American can get.  I thought you might find the tales of a rube in Dublin interesting, so here goes.

The first thing that struck me about Dublin is its history.  Dublin turned 1000 in 1988.  To put that into perspective, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, Dublin was just over 500 years old.  Living in Minneapolis, where buildings are torn down when they turn 40 years old, the narrow streets and very old buildings of Dublin lend the city an aura history and permanence.  America is the land of natural splendor.  Europe features architectural, historical, and cultural magnificence.

Dublin features Georgian buildings galore.   The buildings, usually four stories and a basement, were built between 1714 and 1830.  Rows of the stately buildings decorate the city to this day.  In the 1920’s and during the worldwide depression that began in the 20’s many of the buildings became decrepit as their wealthy owners fell on hard times.  There was no real love for the buildings in Ireland, at that time, because they symbolized English rule (which ended in 1922) and many of them fell into disrepair and were deserted.   However, many survived and were repurposed.

The Georgians were pressured again during the Irish economy’s boom years in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Developers looked to tear down the old buildings and put up condominiums, townhouses and strip malls.  This time, the city, along with coalitions of students and conservationists were able to get a strict preservation law passed that made it very difficult to knock down the Georgians.  So today, Dublin has preserved more examples of Georgian architecture than just about any European city.

                

If none of this is old enough for you, wait, we are getting to the real old stuff.  For example, Pat and I were wandering around Trinity College (founded in 1592) and we happened into the lobby of the Geology Building.  There was a fully assembled skeleton of a blumenbuch.  The blumenbuch was a giant Irish deer that went extinct about 11,000 years ago.  So you are as likely to see a blumenbuch today as a rational Republican.  Actually, I can’t verify this, but I think there was an ancient restaurant in Australia where you got a bloomenonion with every order of blumenbuch.

Buchen A, What the hell is that?

  

Ireland struggled with the English over their independence for 600 years.  Naturally, many remnants of that fight are still very close to the surface of Ireland’s psyche.  Traditional music recants many a sad and/or heroic event.  When you hear this music live and realize the fight went on till 1922, you can understand its resonance with the population.  You can still see the bullet holes in the columns in front of the General Post Office (the”GPO”) where the Easter Rebellion broke out on Easter Sunday in 1916.  We toured the Kilmainham Gaol, where leaders of 5 Irish rebellions were jailed between 1798 and 1916.  Thirteen of the Easter Rebellion leaders were detained and ultimately executed at the gaol.  It’s not that the British weren’t sympathetic jailers.  One of the Irish leaders was seriously wounded in the fighting and could not stand up to face a firing squad.  So the ever-accommodating authorities tied him to a chair and then shot him.  Another one of the leaders was given ten minutes to see his new bride in a semi private meeting and then taken out later that day and shot.  So, feelings run deep.

During the Potato Famine in the mid 1800s, the prison housed many children who were jailed for stealing bread or coal.  Things got so desperate, that as bad as it was in the prison, starving outside of it was worse, and people tried to get jailed for the meager rations that were supplied to the prisoners.

It’s hard to imagine that this is all very recent history in Dublin.  Of course, you can go visit Saint Patrick’s Cathedral if you want to go back to the date of its establishment in 1192.  Interestingly enough, there are no Catholic cathedrals in Dublin.  Some of the more prominent ones switched denominations back and forth depending on whether the King or Queen was killing Catholics or Protestants at any particular time, but they are all Anglican now.

Pat and I toured Saint Patrick’s and I noted a difference from the Catholic Cathedrals in Europe, North, and South America, I have visited.  The Catholic Cathedral’s statues are, by and large, of various popes and saints along with Mary and Jesus.  Saint Patrick’s was full of statues of politicians, judges, military officers, lawyers and other members of the ruling class.  The statutes were accompanied with plaques that explained what great people they were and who put up the money to have the statue placed in the Cathedral.  It triggered in me the same reaction, that all of these magnificent churches do, whatever their denomination.  I always wonder how much poverty could have been alleviated and I wonder how Jesus would react to such splendor erected in his name.  I always have to push such thoughts aside and just marvel at the beauty and breathtaking majesty man was able to create so long ago.

Jonathan Swift was the Dean of the Cathedral from 1713 to 1745 and is buried there.  He was a champion of the poor of Dublin as well as the author of “Gulliver’s Travels” and “A Modest Proposal”.  You probably remember “A Modest Proposal” from some English class you were forced to take in high school.  It was always held up as an example of satire as Swift proposed the cooking and eating of poor Irish babies as a means of reducing the number of poor and as an excellent source of protein.

If you are going to Ireland for the weather, I suggest you think again.  The temperatures were in the fifties and low sixties.  If you don’t like the weather, wait an hour and it will change.  Rain, sun, cloudy, windy can all happen, not just in one day, but more than once in any given day. Ireland is much further north than you might think, but the water that surrounds it moderates its temperatures.  Fortunately, the ingenious Irish, knowing that the weather could turn to crap at any moment, established an amazing array of pubs suitable for ducking into at the first sign of foul weather.  Our first night in Dublin, I was battling staying awake to minimize jet lag, when I came across a list of the ten best pubs in Dublin. Nancy, our host, asked me to read them to her and she said she had her own list of best ten pubs, doubling the establishments that would need to be examined.  We didn’t get to them all, but we did make it to quite a few.

In Dublin, there just doesn’t seem to be any new pubs.  When you enter, there is a well-worn sense of permanence that ties you to the generations who have gathered here before you.  We actually went to a pub called the Brasen Head that has seen a pub on that site since 1198.  That’s a lot of pints down the gullet.  We also went to the smallest Pub in Dublin, which was about the size of Paris Hilton’s shoe closet.  I distinguished myself there by being the first and only person to have to ask directions to the men’s room.

Many of the pubs feature music.  There are regularly scheduled shows and then there are, what they call 'sessions,' where musicians bring their instruments and jam.  It was in search of one of these 'sessions' that brought us to the Cobblestone one afternoon after we had toured the Jameson Distillery (any pattern you might think you are discerning here is illusionary).

The music was in the front of the bar.  There were nine or ten musicians participating, but the seating was very limited.  We ended up going to the back of the bar and sitting at a table next to a friend of Nancy’s.  Fergus was a traditional Irish singer and trade unionist and he and his friends were enjoying a few pints of Guinness.  In fact, they were enjoying them enough that they were drinking two pints for every one I put away.

As the afternoon turned to evening, the pub got crowded.  I went up to the bar to order another round, when I saw a guy about six foot three and wearing a blue and yellow afro wig standing by the bar.  He had a Swedish flag wrapped around his shoulders like a cape and had the greatest baby face you might ever want to see.   I brought our drinks back to our table and told Nancy and Pat about the weird character at the bar.

The night before, the Swedish soccer team had come to Dublin to play the Irish National Team and had effectively knocked the Irish out of World Cup.  I wasn’t sure if this guy was on a suicide mission or what, but it seemed a little risky going around the pubs in that garb the night after the Irish had lost.

Through a series of somewhat hazy circumstances, Andreas, the guy in the wig and cape, and his traveling companion, Pela, ended up sitting with us at our table.  It was then that I witnessed the Irish’s attitude about their sports, which they truly love.  People came over to the freakish pair and after some good-natured banter congratulated them on their team’s victory.  This consistently happened throughout the evening.  The Swedes told us they loved Dublin’s pubs, the people’s attitude, and the reception they were receiving.

Pela and I were sitting next to each other, and during the course of our conversation he told me he was a long time fan of American blues music.  He said he had been listening to blues records for thirty years but had never seen any of his musical heroes perform live.  When I told him that I had seen the likes of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy and scores of other bluesmen numerous times he really came alive.  Meanwhile, Andreas told Nancy and Pat he was a big fan of American sports.  They told him I was the guy he wanted to talk with, so he got up and told Pela to move because he was going to talk sports with me.  When he heard that I had seen many of America’s sports heroes play, he reacted like Pela had when we were talking about the blues.

In separate conversations, both Pela and Andreas asked we what was up with the U.S.’s health care system.  They wondered how we, as a nation, could treat health care as a commodity and not a human right.  For me, it was one of those inexplicable questions, as I totally agreed with their premise.  These two guys from Sweden, who held generally favorable views of the U.S.A., just couldn’t wrap their heads around such a seemly illogical and cruel system.

The art of conversation has flourished in Ireland.  Cab drivers will wait for you to open the conversation and then give you a history lesson or a tutorial on Irish sporting life.  The people have a wonderful sense of humor.  For example they have nicked named the various public statues around town.  A statue of Molly Malone, the famous fish monger and rumored to have practiced a profession much older than fish sales in the evenings, is called, “The Tart with a Cart,” or “The Trollop with the Scallops,” or the “Dish with the Fish.”  In 2003, the Spire of Dublin was built on O’Connell Street just about a block from the Liffey River, which divides north and south Dublin.  The spire was almost immediately renamed, “The Stiffy on the Liffey,” or  “The Erection at the Intersection.”  Oscar Wilde and James Joyce’s statutes also have colorful monikers.  Generally speaking, we found the Irish to be friendly, engaging people with finely developed, self-deprecating, senses of humor.

The Stiffy on the Liffey.

No comment.

The Tart with the Cart.

The Irish love their sports.  They are into hurling, Gaelic football, rugby, soccer, and cricket.  There was American football on the TV in a couple of the pubs, but it was being ignored on a massive scale.  There are two major sports venues in Dublin.  One holds about 50 thousand and the other has an 83 thousand capacity.  The All Irish Hurling Championship game and the All Ireland Gaelic Football Championship games were played while we were in Dublin.  They both drew crowds of 83 thousand as well as a nationwide television audience.

Hurling is billed as the world’s fastest land game.  It is played with a horsehair ball covered in leather about the size of a baseball and a stick that looks like a shorter, thicker hockey stick.  There are 15 men on a team and you score by hitting the ball into a goal similar to a soccer goal for three points or scoring one point by hitting the ball between the uprights that extend up from the edges of the goal.  So imagine 30 men running around swinging sticks in crowds and driving the ball upwards of a hundred miles per hour toward the goal.  I imagine you have seen hockey goalies that look like the Michelin Man when they have donned all of their equipment and padding.  In hurling the goalie, or the “human sacrifice” as I like to call him, only has a stick to try and stop an opponent’s shot.  To the untrained eye it looks a bit insane.  The Championship Game ended in a tie and another game was going to be played in two weeks to determine the champions.

In the intervening week the All Ireland Gaelic Football Championship game was played.  The Gaelic Football League is made up of about 15 teams that represent various Irish counties.  The players don’t get paid and have to reside in the county their team represents.  The Championship game tickets are sold on a general admission basis so it is first come first serve with respect to the seating in the 83 thousand seat facility.  I just can’t imagine this in America.  I was told that fans from the two competing teams are mixed throughout the stadium and while there is some good-natured joking and ribbing that goes on, it remains peaceful and civilized.  Contrast that to England and other places where wearing the wrong team’s colors in the wrong neighborhood will get you beat half to death.  But the Irish keep their sports in perspective.  We saw that when we spent the evening at the Cobblestone with those two lovable doofs from Sweden.

Dublin honors its literary history.  They are rightly proud of the world-class writers that been produced on Irish sod.  It is not uncommon to see plaques with quotes from James Joyce or George Bernard Shaw placed about town.  There is a writer’s museum and various statues of the likes of Oscar Wilde and other literary heroes. Pat and I visited a museum dedicated to the life and writing of James Joyce.  I don’t know of an American city that has established museums to honor their writers, but there must be one somewhere.

On the roof of the James Joyce Museum

In keeping with the literary tradition, there appear to be many independent bookstores.  We only got into a couple, but the ones I saw were there for serious readers.  We ducked into one to get out of the rain one day, and frankly, I could have stayed right there for quite some time if I had been alone and it had been up to me.

As I think about it Dublin, it is a city after my own heart.  Pubs, history, sports, literature, humor, music, theatre, and more pubs are right up my alley.  On our last night in Dublin, we went to see a production of “A Street Car Named Desire” at the Gate Theatre.  I have seen about four “Street Car” productions and this one was probably the best.  I was curious as to how they were going to handle the Louisiana accents, but they did it so well you forgot these were Irish actors on stage. After the play, I was waiting for Pat and Nancy in the lobby when I looked at a picture hanging of the wall.  It was a picture of the Gate’s production of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock and the caption said Joe Dowling, the current Director of Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre, had directed it.  'Tis a small world.

To sum it up, Pat and I had a great time and I want to thank Nancy for being such a great host and having her own list of the top ten pubs in Dublin.  How can you not like a city where so many things are lovely, grand, or brilliant?

Big Gun, Tiny Weiner

The grouch picked up his newspaper the other morning and was treated to a picture of a fellow with a Glock  .40 caliber pistol, proudly strapped to his belt, attending a meeting at the state capital to discuss gun control within the capital building itself.  He was quoted as saying, he felt safer with his own weapon.  How it made the rest of the people attending the meeting feel didn’t seem to concern him.

Unfortunately, the newspaper didn't elaborate on why this individual felt so unsafe that he got up that morning and strapped on his gun and headed to the Capital for a hearing.  The newspaper choose to quote the fellow and let his words speak for themselves.  The grouch feels it is his obligation to delve a little deeper into why some people choose to arm themselves when they leave the house in the morning.

Our modern day Marlboro Man would probably tell me to just read the metro section of my newspaper to get a daily dose of mayhem.  That would seem to lend his case for packing some legitimacy if he lived in a handful of inner city neighborhoods where violence is a fact of daily life.  Much of the violence is tied to gang activity and the drug business.  Sometimes there is collateral damage when innocents intercept bullets, randomly fired during a dispute that has turned deadly.  No one can argue that the parade of dead young men is a too-long ignored social ill and there needs to be a societal response of innovative and honest proportions to help mitigate the bloodshed.  But our Marlboro Man doesn’t seem to be living in those neighborhoods and if he is not hanging around at three in the morning looking to get into the drug business, he probably is not going to be personally effected by the violence he is reading about and seeing on his evening “news” broadcast.

In fact, if you ever do take a look at a map that plots out violent crime in your city you will see the vast majority of violent crime occurs in a handful of poor areas the Marlboro Man wouldn’t set foot in to save his soul.  If you live in, say for example, Eden Prairie MN (a Twin Cities suburb), you can sleep on your driveway with hundred dollar bills stuffed in your pockets, and it is likely you will wake up the next morning with nothing more than a stiff back from sleeping on concrete.  The crime you need to be worried about in most suburbs and many neighborhoods in the cities is your neighbor, from the gated community, trying to get you to invest in a ponzi scheme.   You never see people from the neighborhoods that are suffering from the violence, out advocating for more guns and showing up at public meetings with their Glocks.

This is not to say that the level of violence in America is acceptable.  Shit Happens.  There are no guarantees of a completely safe life.  The point I am making is we have not reached the point where we would all be better off armed to the teeth, nor is the solution to bring more guns to the fight.   This is the position of the NRA and what is behind it is, as in most things, money.  The gun and ammo manufactures make a lot of money keeping our citizenry frightened and looking for simple answers.

I know we are living in a post racist America.  Five justices of the Supreme Court and Fox “News” have proclaimed it so. But I can’t help but think there might be just a tiny bit of racism and fear of others at work here.  It would certainly be interesting if Black and Hispanic guys started to apply for permits and started showing up in the parks and downtown Minneapolis with their pistols showing.  I suspect the permit application process would get tweaked pretty darn quickly.

So crime is an issue and the 24-hour news cycle requires its daily dose.  Given the crime and violence out there and its constant trumpeting it seems to be a miracle that millions of Americans go about their daily lives without feeling so unsafe they won’t go out in public without their shootin' iron.  If our shootist really wants to address the real danger in his life, he will buy himself a tank and try to avoid the annual carnage on our roads and highways.

This brings us to those individuals who want to pack heat because they think the government is about to round them up, take their guns, and throw them in concentration camps.  These are the folks who put the dumb in freedom.

For the sake of argument, let’s say their paranoid fantasies are all coming true.  Can any rational person believe that a country that spends more annually on defense than the next 13 largest militaries combined is going to have a hard time prevailing against a relative handful of patriots with small arms?  You might have your finger on the trigger of your Bushmaster but it won’t help much when the drone strike turns you into a fine mist.

Setting aside the fact that the only part of the Bill of Rights these pistol packers are concerned about is the Second Amendment, these defenders of democracy might want to look to Martin Luther King and Gandhi for successful ways to change the world.  Of course, non-violence takes a mighty big set of cojones and we are talking about people who feel the need to carry lethal weapons when they go to a church picnic.

But grouch, what about the school, church, and theatre massacres that happen far too often?  Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have armed civilians taking down the shooter?  If you ask the police, who train for this sort of thing, the answer is a definite no.  Intense training is provided to swat teams so that they can overcome the very natural instinct to hide or flee when confronting a situation like the theatre shootings in Colorado.  That training has to be continuous or your natural instincts will return and prevail.  The last thing those situations require is someone in a panic firing away.  The police have responded within minutes in these situations.  Of course, our Marlboro Man, through the NRA, will fight to the death not to limit the sale of semi-automatic weapons and large magazines, ensuring the shooter will be able to deal out the maximum damage as quickly as possible.

A recent story posted on Slate relates how an Arkansas Republican state senator, who advocates arming teachers in the classroom, participated in ”active shooter” training, using a rubber bullet loaded pistol, and mistakenly shot a teacher who was confronting a “bad guy.”  Nuff said.

Our Marlboro Man was also quoted in the paper as saying, “You have to be your own hero, on your own white horse.”  I remember when I was about thirteen, I would fantasize about taking on five or six dudes who had insulted the girl I liked or in some way had humiliated me, and beating them all to a pulp.  As I matured, just a tiny bit (I only claim a tiny bit of maturity), those fantasies faded and I set them aside.  I suspect our Marlboro Man hasn’t matured enough to forgo these hero fantasies.  That alone makes him dangerous.

Our Rambo has probably played too many video games and watched too many movies where the hero takes on hordes of heavily armed thugs and eventually guns them all down while surviving a hail of bullets.  I’m waiting for that scenario to be reported in real life.  Unless you have gone into the drug business, you probably can defend your family perfectly well with a shotgun.  The grouch has no problem with someone who wants to have a shotgun or a revolver in his home for protection. However, he should be aware the gun is just as likely to be used in a suicide, domestic murder, or an accident where his seven year old shoots his four year old, than it is to defend his home.  Precautions need to be taken to avoid unintentional disasters.  Of course, that takes a certain level of maturity that may or may not exist in this frightened fellow.

I don’t feel the grouch is alone when he feels queasy seeing an armed civilian walking around a Fourth of July celebration.  In order for everyone to feel a certain level of safety in these situations, the grouch is proposing a new permit process that would better weed out unfit guachos.

 Psychological testing has advanced enough to allow us to better assess people’s qualifications to carry guns to the Macy's flower show.  I propose that a test be a part of the application process that will identify the unreasonably frightened applicant and take that into account when issuing permits.  The test should easily be able to tell if an applicant believes the UN black helicopters are coming or that our Kenyan, socialist, communist, fascist, hater-of-white-people, President is about to throw them in a concentration camp and disqualify these people and get them help for their paranoia.  The test would identify individuals who harbor vigilante or hero fantasies and keep concealed weapons out of their hands.  Those with racist tendencies would be flagged in order to prevent the kind of confrontations that lead to kids being shot to death on their way home from the neighborhood store.  Finally, the permit process should automatically reject anyone who pays to listen to Glenn Beck’s podcast as those people are obviously suffering from all the conditions described in this paragraph.  Once this test is part of the permit process, I know that I, for one, will feel a whole lot safer.

I Do Better With a Deadline

So, last night (as we're watching the 3rd Packer Pre-Season game and eating beer-cheese pretzels - Vince Young? Totally viable 2nd string option - yes!), the Grouch casually mentions that he's working on his next blog post.  Shit.  In his last blog post, he said the teacher would be writing next.  Maybe that was a subtle push from the Grouch to get writing or maybe it was just an off-hand comment made during one of the 37 million pauses-in-action-due-to-inept-refs-throwing-flags.  Regardless, the effect was the same: a deadline was set and here I am.

Actually, I do better with a deadline.  That's why I taught summer school this summer.  Well, that and the excellent money which P and I have already spent on plane tickets to Zihuatanejo.  But really, it was because I need a schedule to be a productive person.  If I know someone else is counting on me to do something (or, you know, some kids need some edumacating), I'll get right off my hiney and get to work.  Otherwise, it's frozen pizza and bagged salad for dinner again and yes I did walk the dog in my pajamas for the third day in a row, what's it to you?  You see, I can't count on P to motivate me because we're married and he's too smart to tell me to do something over summer break.  Also, he's overly helpful, which in turn, makes me feel guilty about my 7 daily hours on the couch, but allows me to stay put.

So summer school forced me to get dressed, exercise (I had to/got to bike to school everyday since P worked at a school farther away), and get out into the world on a daily basis for 6 weeks.  It's a sickness that might be unique to United Statesians to not be able to relax and enjoy down time and I definitely have it.  And, I realize that this next statement is weird, as well, but I acutally like my job quite a bit, so those two factors combined to make me the perfect summer school teacher applicant.  I worked at another North Minneapolis school as an ESL teacher, co-teaching a science unit on Chemical Reactions to exiting 5th graders.  We got to explode stuff and it was great.

Studies say (and to which studies am I referring? No idea, but I've heard people say it and I'm repeating it - academic, I know) that kids start to make the decision to drop out of school in the 4th grade.  That's 9 and 10 years old, people.  Not OK.  Summer school in Minneapolis is about getting students re-energized about school.  Our main goal was to show our kiddos that it is possible to have fun and learn about science at the same time and if I do say so myself, I think we were largely successful.  We hypothesized, we made posters, we danced, we did aerobics, we exploded stuff, we went orienteering and canoeing.  We had a really good time and learned a bunch along the way.  You know, kind of like school is supposed to go.  Now, I'm not meaning to toot my own horn here too much, I had an amazing, inspiring co-teacher whose energy I hope to channel all year long in my regular classes and we had good curriculum/materials and GREAT KIDS.

 

Other stuff happened this summer - we went up to a cabin in Northern Wisconsin with my Mom's side of the familia and it was 50 degrees and raining.  In July.  Possibly the worst weekend of weather all summer.  But we trucked on and I caught two keepers (bass) and P caught two tiny fish (tee hee) and we enjoyed ourselves just the same.  P discovered that he enjoys gringo fishing (sitting in a boat and casting a reel), though he finds it ridiculously low energy.  He's used to climbing out on to craggy rocks and throwing a weighted line that has been wrapped ingeniously around a Coke bottle or battling the waves to throw out nets.  We did buy winter hats and mittens at a tent sale, so there's that.

What it's supposed to look like!

What it did look like.

We've also been going to obedience class with our puppy, Osa.  I can't remember if I've told all 5.5 of you about her, but she's our 6 month old black lab mix of who knows what and she's lovely.  She's the best puppy!  She was crate trained within 3 days at 3 months and if you've ever had a puppy, you know that's saying something.  She passed out of level 1 in two classes and we were such proud puppy parents and now we've been in level 2 for about 5 weeks and we're starting to be slightly antsy to move up, but there are so many puppies to play with at class and concentrating is hard.  Much like middle school.  We've also discovered dog parks, which is a whole new world to Osa and to us.  There are dog park norms and a whole society of dog park people that we didn't know about.  We've paid our dues (literally) and I think we're getting the hang of it - in fact, we're heading there as soon as I publish this puppy! (Pun intended, ahem.)

Brand-spanking new - Day one as our fur-baby!

That brings us up to the impending doom also known as the beginning of the school year.  Just two days from now, students will file off those blasted yellow school buses and into my head and heart.  I'm not ready, but I will be.  I'm both excited and terrified, but I know this feeling well by now and am used to it.  My good friend and co-worker had a baby, so I'm taking on the role of lead ESL teacher this year which means I need to be very organized and on my game.  I bought a large calendar and hope that helps.  School supplies always help.  Always.  Also, I'll be co-teaching with a new English Language Arts teacher this year and pushing in to Math classes as well.  Ohhhh boy.  I did not inherit my mother's math sense, I got my dad's... which means I might be uniquely poised to be confused right along with all of my students. It could be a benefit, it could be a deficit, only time will tell.

I just re-read that last paragraph and it made it sound like I don't want the kids to come.  That's not entirely true.  Mostly I don't want them to come yet.  I could do with one more week.  I want to go to the Fair on a Tuesday or any other day that is not a Saturday or Sunday.  I want to have a couple more days in my classroom to unpack and organize.  I want a couple more days to collaborate with my colleagues to make sure that we're all on the same page and to link our lessons so that our students make the connections that they'll need to incorporate all this new learning into their existing schema (see, I got the lingo down).  But, when do teachers have enough time? Never (that's the answer, in case you were wondering).  But you know what?  I feel o.k. because, as it turns out, I do better with a deadline.